Jabil Launches Materials Innovation Center for Additive Manufacturing

For additive manufacturing to move from prototyping applications to true manufacturing uses, OEMs need access to a broader range of printing materials. Jabil has announced its Jabil Engineered Materials solution that will give OEMs access to a solution to create, integrate and validate custom engineered materials for additive manufacturing that it will make available to its customers.

A Worldwide Semiannual 3D Printing Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC) released in August 2018 estimated that global spending on 3D printing (including hardware, materials, software, and services) will grow to $23.0 billion in 2022 with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.4%. IDC forecasts worldwide spending to exceed $14.0 billion in 2019, an increase of 23.2% over 2018. “Together, 3D printers and materials will account for roughly two thirds of the worldwide spending total throughout the forecast, reaching $7.8 billion and $8.0 billion respectively in 2022,” the report said.

The company has opened Materials Innovation Center in Minnesota to deliver complete 3DP solutions from a single location, including polymer formulations, compound development, and ISO 9001 Quality Management System (QMS) certification. “Over last four years, it has become clear that there is a huge gap in the available set of materials for 3D printing versus those available for traditional manufacturing. Many new products and processes have driven interest in exotic new materials, but today there are only a handful available and those that are available are narrow in scope, function, and capabilities so they don’t solve materials issues the way traditional materials have for traditional manufacturing,” said John Dulchinos, vice president of digital manufacturing at Jabil.

Pallets of Jabil Engineered Material in filament form are prepared for shipment to Jabil customers and distribution partners.

Jabil’s Materials Innovation Center will evaluate, qualify, and validate custom powders and filaments in conjunction with the 3D printers and processes being used in order to ensure that the resulting parts will meet the performance and application requirements of the manufacturer.

Currently, the center employs 80 people, including additive manufacturing engineers, chemists, materials scientists, and production experts. “We picked Minnesota because it’s a great place for polymer science people,” said Dulchinos. “We’ve hired 40 people there in the past year.”

As part of Jabil’s integrated MPM approach, each engineered material undergoes rigorous strength testing to validate durability and performance for a variety of applications.

Jabil is hoping that its efforts will drive adoption of 3D printing in manufacturing by supporting the need to produce functional parts with unique characteristics demanded by customer applications. “Our ability to integrate new engineered materials into our ecosystem of 3D printers and rigorous processes will transform a new generation of additive manufacturing applications, including those for heavily regulated industries, such as aerospace, automotive, industrial and healthcare,” said Dulchinos.

On a practical note, by creating a single source to create and iterate engineered materials will allow manufacturers to source the right material quickly. The materials can be created to deliver a variety of value-added attributes including a variety of engineered characteristics including reinforced, flame retardant, UV stable, conductive, lubricated, and Electrostatic Dissipative (ESD) among others, Dulchinos said in an interview.

“We have built a full end-to-end capability to innovate and produce materials and we’ve done that because we want to go fast,” Dulchinos explained. “If a customer comes in with a set of requirements we can create a first version for testing in two to three weeks. That’s important because it is an iterative process of checking properties, determining the gaps and then reformulating. We are putting everything under one roof, in order to create stuff in weeks not years.”

Jabil will offer a range of services also are available, including compounding, extrusion and powder creation, as well as complete system integration on standard, open source platforms supported by Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and High-Speed Sintering (HSS) equipment. “Our focus is on the long tail of the material market,” said Dulchinos. “3D is a lower volume, higher mix range of applications. The big chemical companies don’t want to serve the market.”

Jabil Engineered Materials are available now through its distribution partners, including Chase Plastics and Channel Prime Alliance. Today, the center is focused on plastics, but may evolve to metal parts in the future, Dulchinos said.

We have to keep looking out for potential business opportunities and this is just what this giant has managed to do. By providing the solution that the group of OEMs needs, this giant is making it big in the market out there since there has yet to be a single service provider in this field. However, it could be not long before more competitors would want to try to seize the deal.

I reckon that with that much R&D going on, we might see one of the industries pull much further ahead in comparison to the other in due course. It's really just a matter of time before people figure out just how they can use 3D printing to their advantage. And once everybody is on board, hopefully we'll start to see more sustainable and efficient practices taking root. It's a really great time for innovation with such technologies and possibilities available!